Sweet Reason (9781590209011) Read online

  The leaflet, single-spaced and indented, began:

  Comrades in arms

  (“We used to use ‘comrades in arms’ all the time during the war,” Jones had mused when he and the XO first discussed the leaflet that morning. “I guess the boys in the Kremlin ruined that.”)

  Today the officers and enlisted men on the Ebersole, which for all practical purposes is a segregated ship, will be ordered, by our racist Pig captain whose hobby is collecting concentration camp barbed wire, to kill innocent men, women and children, kill them just as surely as if some Pig sadist Nazi put a rifle to their heads and spattered their brains in the mud. DON’T LET THEM MAKE KILLERS OUT OF US! ! ! ! Don’t make war on innocent men, women and children.

  For 20 years Amerika has been acting as if peace is a Communist plot. Let peace start today on the Ebersole when the guns go silent. You can do your part by letting the equipment break down. If the Ebersole can’t get there, if the guns won’t work, they can’t make US KILL.

  Remember: Nobody can force you to pull a trigger!

  The Voice of Sweet Reason

  “About these leaflets,” the Captain was saying. He changed pace now, speaking quietly and quickly, using the earnest tones of a man who has been wronged, squeezing all the sincerity he could into the space between words. “I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I strongly resent the suggestion that I personally harbor any racist feelings, or that I preside over a segregated ship. I’ve been in this man’s navy since before some of you were born, serving both as an enlisted man and an officer, and I have never treated a colored sailor any differently than I treat white sailors, never, absolutely never. As for the Ebersole being a segregated ship; since that fuss on the mess deck in Norfolk, a few of our colored crewmen have chosen — of their own free will and volition, mind you — to congregate on one side of the mess deck. But to suggest that this constitutes segregation, well —”

  Jones flung his arms wide in the air, as if to say that the charge was so ridiculous it needed no further rebuttal.

  More about the “Fuss” on the Mess Deck

  The “fuss” on the mess deck had taken place while the ship was tied up to a pier at the Norfolk destroyer base. After the evening meal, with Jones and the XO and most of the officers off drinking at the Officers’ Club, Ohm had flipped on the mess deck’s black and white television set to The Beverly Hillbillies. Angry Pettis had insisted on watching a special starring James Brown, Soul Brother Number One. There was some preliminary name calling. In an instant the disagreement had erupted into a rip-roaring bar brawl, with sailors pouring into the mess deck from surrounding compartments and fists and coffee mugs flying in all directions.

  Despite a considerable amount of screaming, Lustig (who was in charge while the Captain was off the ship) had been unable to bring the battle to a standstill. It was de Bovenkamp who solved the immediate problem by commandeering the color television from the first-class lounge and installing it on the other side of the mess deck. With that the two camps, glancing over their shoulders sullenly, had settled down to watch their respective programs. The next morning at breakfast the blacks on board all took seats on the James Brown side of the mess deck, while the whites filed in on The Beverly Hillbillies’ side.

  The Captain had laughed off reports of a race riot. “If you ask me, it was a clear case of high spirits.”

  On the mess deck the separate but equal arrangement quickly froze into the status quo.

  More about the Barbed Wire

  “As for the business about the barbed [he pronounced it ‘bob’] wire,” the Captain was saying. “This a perfect example of how something can be distorted all out of proportion. Some of you may have noticed the bob-wire display in my cabin. I was born and raised in La Crosse, Kansas, which happens to be the bob-wire capital of the world. You probably aren’t aware of it, there’s no reason why you should be, but it so happens there are hundreds of types of bob wire, not any one all-purpose bob wire. When I was a youngster” — the Captain’s eyes glistened with a faraway look — “my God, I used to enter the splicing contests every year. Once I turned in an eleven-second effort and walked off with a second prize against contestants from all over the state.”

  Jones shook the memory out of his head. “But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that I collect bob wire the way some people collect stamps. The display on my bulkhead is part of my collection. The strand in the center, the one surrounded by gold braid, happens to be a collector’s item. It’s worth five hundred dollars if it’s worth a penny. It’s an actual strand of wire made in La Crosse in eighteen sixty-two and used to fence in the Indian reservations. The bobs are on the inside so as not to hurt cattle on the outside. Now to make out that there is some connection between this and concentration camps, well, it’s downright offensive. There’s nothing wrong with bob wire per se. In the hands of Americans, it was used to open the West to civilization and create a lucrative cattle industry. In the hands of the Nazis, of course, it’s something else again.”

  “Captain,” the XO piped up after a moment’s hesitation. “I think I speak for all the officers in this wardroom and for all the men on this ship when I say that there is no question that the insinuations made against you personally are slander, pure and simple.”

  “It never occurred to me you would see it any other way, gentlemen,” Jones said generously. “I don’t mind telling you that without your marvelous support, this kind of thing could give a commanding officer a complex.”

  (Later Lustig thought of: “You already have one — a military industrial complex.”)

  “Nevertheless,” Jones plunged on, “I wanted to set the record straight, so to speak. Which brings us to the main order of business.” Jones nodded again to underscore the question that followed. “Who, gentlemen, who is Sweet Reason?”

  The Captain allowed the question to sink in. Then, letting his eyes traverse the table, he added: “Let’s face facts. We are dealing with a lousy, stinking fifth-column rotten apple. And we’ve got to stamp out this rotten apple before it infects the other weak apples in the barrel. But we’ve got to do it delicately — we mustn’t bruise any of the good apples going after the bad.”

  “It’s got to be a surgical strike,” said the XO.

  “Precisely,” agreed the Captain. His facial muscles quivered and he brought a hand up to his cheek to restore order.

  “Captain, sir, with all respect, have you considered the other possibilities?” asked the Poet. “There’s always a chance it’s a joke, isn’t there?”

  “Mister Joyce, the person who signs himself Sweet Reason has invited the officers and men on board this ship to commit sabotage and mutiny. That’s no joke. We’re dealing with a rotten apple, and I mean to crucify him. Before we can do that, however, we have to find him. I’m open to suggestions, eh?”

  Ensign de Bovenkamp raised his hand.

  “There’s no need to raise your hand here, Mister de Bovenkamp,” the Captain said in a kindly voice. “Just speak up, my boy.”

  “Proper,” de Bovenkamp said, his jaw working on a wad of chewing gum. “How about putting Proper on it, Captain?”

  Proper’s Curriculum Vitae

  Sonarman Third Dwight Proper was obviously the man for the job. A short, wiry sailor with beetle eyebrows and an abnormally low hairline, he had been a member of the Chicago Police Force for two years before enlisting in the navy. (No matter that he had been a uniformed patrolman on the traffic detail.) Proper quit the force and went to sea for a breath of fresh, pollen-free air; he had hay fever, rose fever, and was allergic to dust, fresh fruit, corn, mayonnaise, cats, dogs and wool. Unfortunately, he turned out to be allergic to navy-issue pillows and mattresses too, a fact of life that forced him to go around armed with a Benzedrex Inhaler at all times.

  Proper’s experience as a Chicago cop had already been put to good use in Cartagena when Chaplain Rodgers discovered that there was 753 men ashore from various U.S. Navy ships in the port —
but only fourteen of them could be seen, sipping soda through honest-to-goodness Spanish straw, on the main drag.

  “Can’t account for the whereabouts of seven hundred thirty-nine sailors,” the Chaplain frantically radioed Captain Jones, who had the day’s shore patrol command duty.

  “Find those seven hundred thirty-nine men, Proper,” the skipper had ordered, and in no time at all the ex-Chicago cop had solved the case. All 739 of them, it turned out, were on The Hill, a labyrinthine quarter on the edge of town with narrow, muddy, urine-soaked streets and hundreds of half-naked urchins running around barefoot soliciting for the whorehouses.

  “Look at all those fucking sailors!” exclaimed Proper when he arrived on the scene.

  “Well I’ll be damned!” muttered the Chaplain when Proper returned to The Hill with him in tow.

  Proper Picks Up the Scent

  “Several things are readily apparent,” intoned Proper in his preliminary report to Captain Jones an hour after the war council.

  “Point A: True Love is definitely not your Sweet Reason. I questioned him very carefully. He swears that the leaflet was already rolled up in your napkin ring when he picked up the breakfast tray in the galley and brought it topside. He thought it was a plan of the day. The other stewards said the same thing. And I believe them.” Proper said it as if the fact that he believed them left no room for anybody else to doubt them. “If they were guilty, Captain, they wouldn’t have left the incriminating leaflet somewhere that cast suspicion on them, you get my point? Which means that someone slipped in during the night and put that leaflet in your napkin ring.”

  “But I thought the galley was locked during the night?”

  “It is, Captain, but the key is left under the rubber mat in front of the door because the steward who locks up at night is not the one who opens it in the morning and there’s only one key.”

  “I see,” nodded the Captain. He was impressed with Proper’s thoroughness. “Go on, go on.” Jones chewed away on the inside of his cheek as Proper continued.

  “Point B: Sweet Reason is a poor speller.”

  “A poor speller, eh?”

  “Yes sir, a poor speller. You’ll notice he spells ‘Amerika’ with a K. It’s not a typing error, because the K is nowheres near the C on a typewriter. You get my point?”

  “Yes, I think I do. What about fingerprints?”

  “That’s my point C, Captain. Point C: It would be useless to dust the evidence for fingerprints because too many people have already handled the merchandise, if you know what I mean. And the chances are pretty good that the culprit was careful to keep his prints off in the first place.”

  The Captain was beginning to get edgy. “You don’t sound very hopeful, Proper.”

  “On the contrary, Captain, I have every reason to believe I can identify your Sweet Reason by tonight.”

  “Well, that is good news. How?”

  “Captain, do you notice anything about these four leaflets?” Proper spread them out on the desk, putting weights on the corners of the window-shade one to keep it flat.

  Jones studied the leaflets intently for a few moments. “Only that they’re the work of a goddamn rotten apple,” he said finally.

  “With all respect, Captain, you have to look at this with a detached eye, if you get my point. Now the first thing I notice when I look at these four leaflets is that they were typed on the same typewriter. The one in your napkin ring is the original; the other three are carbon copies. See how they get less distinct as you go along?”

  “By Jesus Christ Almighty, you’re right!”

  “I tried typing with the same grade of paper — it’s sold in the ship’s store, by the way — and I discovered that I could make an original and five readable copies if I used new carbons, and four readable copies if the carbons were old ones. Get my point?”

  “Go on, Proper, go on, my boy,” the Captain said impatiently.

  “There are probably one or two copies of this seditious leaflet still in circulation on the ship, if my guess is right.”

  “All this is very interesting, my boy, but how will it help you find Sweet Reason?”

  “Oh, that’s simple. I’ll just check the type on every typewriter on the ship until I find the one that typed this leaflet. The sailor who owns that typewriter or has access to it is your Sweet Reason.”

  Captain Jones Takes the Conn

  Lustig, who was the Officer of the Deck, and the XO, who was trying to improve his sun tan, were chatting on the wing of the bridge. The Ebersole was plane-guarding for an aircraft carrier, steaming on the port beam of the giant ship as it raced into the wind and recovered its jets from a strike against the mainland.

  “That’s the thing about people like that,” the Executive Officer was saying. “Sweet Reason, my ass. They only know the bad side, never the good side. A country as big as ours is bound to have faults. But it’s a place where a man can start with nothing and pull himself up by his own bootstraps. My god, it’s a place where anybody can become President.”

  (“Anybody has,” Lustig thought of saying — too late to fit it gracefully into the conversation.)

  “Sweet Reason,” the XO went on, shaking his head mournfully. “What a misnomer that is.”

  Noncommittal as always, Lustig took a bearing on the carrier’s superstructure jutting like a high-rise apartment from one side of the flight deck and discovered that the Ebersole was slightly off station. “Helmsman, steer three one seven,” he called into the pilot house.

  Ohm appeared at the pilot house door waving a scrap of paper that the messenger had just brought up from the Captain’s cabin. “Permission to pass the word?” he said.

  “Granted, Ohm.”

  Ohm clicked on the public-address system. “Now all hands with” — he studied the next word for a moment as if he didn’t believe it — “typewriters, lay aft to the after wardroom with same.”

  Ohm’s voice was still echoing through the ship when the jet fighter crashed three quarters of a mile from the Ebersole, bounced twice like a flat stone skidding off a lake and sank back into the sea.

  As a great arc of sea spray with a rainbow through it settled gently around the plane, all hell broke loose on the Ebersole.

  “Left full rudder, all engines ahead flank,” boomed Lustig, his pulse racing wildly. “Get the Captain up here.”

  “Captain to the bridge,” Ohm yelled into the public-address system and listened to the words echo from speaker to speaker below deck: “Captain to the bridge, to the bridge, the bridge.”

  Jones came bounding up the ladder as the Ebersole heeled hard over to port.

  The voice of someone who fancied himself a radio announcer, supremely calm and dulcet-toned, clicked onto the primary tactical circuit from the carrier: “Elbow Room, Elbow Room, this is Isolated Camera. One of our pigeons is down, over.”

  “Roger, Elbow Room on the way, out,” Lustig told the carrier.

  “I have the conn,” cried the Captain. He lined up the downed plane in the cross hairs of the telescopic alidade. “Come back, Jesus, come back to two four seven,” he screamed at Carr, the helmsman.

  “Nobody gave me no course to come to,” Carr muttered to anyone within earshot, and added: “Loony bin, goddamn loony bin.” He shifted the rudder and steadied on 247.

  “Steady on two four seven,” he called out.

  The Captain ignored him. “Tell main control to stand by to back down fast and give me all stop,” he yelled to Lustig.

  “But Captain, we have superheats on,” Lustig said. It took ten or twelve minutes to lower the superheats to the point where main control could safely stop the engines without permanently damaging the boilers.

  “What are the goddamn superheats doing on?” screamed Jones. He was dancing up and down now and pounding the railing with the flat of his hand.

  “You ordered them on,” said Lustig.

  “Well, get them off!”

  The Ebersole’s bow knifed through the water towa
rd the downed jet, 400 yards away.

  “All back full,” yelled the Captain.

  The gap closed rapidly.

  “All back emergency,” Jones shrieked. “Give me everything you’ve got.”

  The lee helmsman jiggled the bells to indicate emergency astern. The Ebersole began to lose way rapidly.

  “You’d better alternate between ahead and astern bells, Skipper, or we’ll back away from her,” the XO whispered over the Captain’s shoulder.

  “You think so, eh?” Jones said without turning around. “All engines ahead one third,” he called to the lee helmsman.

  The Ebersole’s bow, with a rescue team poised on it ready to dive in and save the pilot, cut toward the plane. It looked as if the destroyer had come to a dead stop about twenty yards away when the one-third-ahead bell began to take effect.

  “Back, back, Christ Almighty, all back full,” screamed the Captain — too late.

  The bow lifted on the crest of a swell and sliced down like a cleaver, gashing the jet behind the cockpit. The swimmers from the Ebersole, long safety lines tied to their waists, leaped into the sea on top of the plane. With water pouring in through the gash in the fuselage the jet began to sink. One of the swimmers, Signalman Third Jefferson Waterman, yanked at the canopy, but it had been jammed shut in the crash with the Ebersole. The plane plunged under now and the swimmers standing on it were in seawater up to their shoulders. Waterman made a last try, diving down and hammering on the cockpit with his bare fists, hammering and pulling and clawing at it until blood poured from his hands. Then he shot up gasping for air and crying like a baby.

  The men on the bridge could still see the sinking jet, magnified and shimmering under twenty feet of clear blue water. The yellow flight helmet of the pilot, with a screaming eagle decalcomania on it, lay twisted at an odd angle from the body, bobbing gently up and down in the water-filled cockpit.

  “He was probably dead anyhow,” the Captain said. “Chances are he was dead, eh?”